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IT was one of those relentlessly hot, oppressive July Sundays which saps the strength, weakens the will and leads to total inaction. Veda was sitting in a canvas chair on the back lawn dressed in frayed, green, cotton shorts and a fading yellow T-shirt, her legs drawn up, bare feet resting on the seat, a browning arm curled round a bare knee. Whilst it had been a faintly enjoyable afternoon, and certainly more enjoyable than the afternoon she would have had, Veda had felt a little cheated. This boy who lived in a bedroom covered with J.A.S.On tokens had actually told her nothing except that he was a semi-orphaned half-Welsh Aquarian.
She stared down the garden, over the soft, long grass, past the bright, colourful dahlias and roses, oranges, pinks and yellows, past the shrubs and the bushes, through the cruel barbed wire her sister's boyfriend had erected on top of the fence to deter would-be burglars to the shady copse beyond, with its pale green shadows and darting dragonflies and gently winding stream and old, gnarled, moss-smothered trees. In such a copse, by such a stream...
The doorbell clanged confidently. "Round the back!" she called.
"Hi," said Iestyn, wheeling a maroon and orange mountain bike (or ATB) round the corner of the house. It had huge, chunky lawn-chewing tyres. "That jasmine smells fantastic," he said. He was wearing baggy black shorts, white socks, grey trainers.
"Yeah," said Veda. "You cycled all the way? It must be six miles."
"Beautiful day," he said, "Too good to waste." He adopted a winsome grin. "Can you spare some juice for a weary traveller?" He leaned against the crossbar, face screwed up against the glare of the sun, his "Vision of Jerome" T-shirt sweat-stuck to his body. "I've brought my recipe." He handed her a grubby piece of paper.
Jambalaya (serves 6)
1 fl oz. (or 25 ml) oil
12 oz (350 g) spicy sausage, e.g. chorizo, sliced
6 chicken breasts, boned and cut into small pieces
ground black pepper
5 oz (150 g) onions, chopped
4 sticks celery, chopped
8 oz (225 g) green peppers, chopped
1 tablespoon chopped garlic
1½ pints (700 ml) stock
cayenne pepper
14 oz (400 g) white long-grain rice
Heat the oil in a large, heavy saucepan and add the sausage. Season the chicken and add that. Fry together until browned then add the onions, celery, green peppers and garlic. Cover with stock and add cayenne pepper. Bring to the boil. Add the rice, cover and simmer for ten minutes. Turn off the heat and leave for a further 20 minutes to allow the rice to finish cooking.
"You didn't come all the way just to give me this," said Veda.
"Why not?" He dropped his bike on the grass. "I've just been to church. I sing in the choir, you know. Did Purcell's anthem 'Blessed are they that fear the Lord,' written in 1688 to celebrate the Queen's pregnancy." He sang a treble burst of "Happy shalt thou be" and sat on the lawn, ankles crossed.
Veda narrowed her eyes and said "What do you know, Iestyn?"
He plucked the cotton away from his chest. "I know that I hate feeling clammy," he said. "It's very pleasant out here, you know. All you can smell is honeysuckle or roses. All you can hear is birdsong and water and the breeze in the trees. Where I live all you can smell is exhaust fumes and all you can hear is traffic or people mowing their lawns." He turned suddenly. "What is it with suburban Britain? Every Sunday in the summer millions of Britons get off on mowing the lawn and washing the car."
Veda smiled. "I used to live in the city too, you know. A view of the gasworks. All I could smell was gas."
They sat still for a while. The heat from the sun was intense. Veda sensed a trickle of sweat rising in her armpit and noticed Iestyn plucking at his T-shirt again. "Do you want to go for a walk?" she asked. "It's cool in the woods and there's a nice stream."
"Can I take my bike in first? You can't trust these country kids."
Veda winced as a flake of paint scraped from the door frame floated away to the blue-grey tiles and watched the rays of strong July sunlight penetrating the dusty panes and striking the burnished copper of the hanging pans, whilst Iestyn drank a glass of juice. Then they walked through the woods, savouring the shady cool and filtered green light. Occasionally Iestyn broke off a twig or ripped at a leaf, the only sounds to compete with birdsong, the babble and chatter of water dancing over pebbles and sand and their own softly murmuring voices.
Iestyn's father was dead. He had been run over in the Kilburn High Road in London. A Toyota had sped through traffic lights, swerved round the railings, mowed him down and zoomed off again. He had choked on his own blood outside Kilburn Park Tube Station, liver smashed beyond repair. He had died after a forty-two day coma. Veda didn't really know what to say. Anything would have been a platitude.
Iestyn stripped bark from the twig. "They sent me to a psychiatrist. They said I needed therapy."
"They?"
"School. Social-workers. Educational psychologists. Establishment people."
He tossed the broken-backed, stripped-to-the-green twig into the stream with a gesture of supreme derision. "They asked me questions." He watched the twig turning lazily in the current. "Just like you. Always asking. Always questions. Why? Who? What? When? Except their's were even more stupid than yours." His burning coal-dark eyes swung back. "They made me look at a photo of my father and name in forty-two seconds as many FA Cup Winners between the years 1970 and 1990 as I could. I got them all except Everton in 1984. The psychiatrist said that was understandable." He dug in his pocket and pulled out a crumpled piece of paper. "They dropped ink on bits of paper, folded them in half and asked me what they looked like." He smoothed out the paper and passed it across.
"And what does it look like?" she asked.
His reply was angry, scornful. "It looks like an inkblot, of course." He screwed it up and threw it into a bush. "Schools and doctors and social-workers... they don't understand. They don't know. How could they? They're only puppets."
"How does your mother cope?" asked Veda.
"Two jobs," said the boy. "Secretary at the Jorum Gallery and an evening job at The Jester." (Ah! thought Veda. That's where I've seen her before!) He scratched an insect bite irritably. "The house is all paid for though. Mr Jukes wrote off the mortgage."
"Jukes?"
"Josh's Dad. The _est agent."
They had reached a place where the muddy bank flattened and widened into a kind of small beach in the crook of a bend. Footprints by the water's edge and a scraggy length of rope dangling from an overhanging branch and fastened with a knot of Gordian proportion indicated that this cove was the playground of the local youngsters. Iestyn reached up and brushed the fraying end with his fingertips. A low stone bridge cleared the rippling surface by about twelve inches. Through the water they could see slimy, slippery stones and an occasional grey sliver of stickleback. Iestyn prised off his trainers and stripped off his socks, then sat on the bridge. Tentatively, he touched the surface of the stream with his toes.
"Great." His feet slid into the water. "Soothing," he added, "On a baking hot day."
Veda kicked off her sandals and sat beside him. The coolness was welcome and... yes, he was right, soothing.
"All we need now is a couple of fishing rods, a flask and some sarnies," he said. His toes curled and wriggled. His feet looked very white against the brown of the water. He ran a hand through his conker-brown hair and grinned suddenly through his freckles. "Could be Jacinthus' bathing pool," he said, then broke into song: " 'Buz, quoth the blue fly, Hum, quoth the bee', And buz and hum they cry'."
Veda remembered his death scene as Hieronimo, the prodding and pricking with the Devil's (phallic) trident. She remembered him carrying that red-brown liver on the point of his dagger, remembered him chained to the dungeon wall in his ragged white shift pleading for mercy, for himself and his father, remembered him floating on his back in the swimming pool, remembered him stalking along the tiled floor in his orange trunks, c
hlorinated water running over his shoulders and back…
Picking up a small stone, he scratched on the grey slab next to his thigh
It
Woz
Ere.
"Vandal," she smiled. "Vandalising Juvenile."
"They will never know who it was," he smiled.
Veda found her eyes drawn to his, then to his mouth. The atmosphere seemed to buzz. They leaned towards each other. A kiss. Was. Coming. She parted her lips. He tilted his head. Everything stopped.
For a moment.
Then he swivelled on a buttock and kicked a shower of brown water over her legs. "Fancy a paddle?" He hauled his T-shirt over his head, heaped it on the stone, then dragged off his shorts and stepped down into the knee-deep pool. "Come on in," he said. "The water's lovely."
"Tell me the answer," she said. "Please."
He scratched again on the stones.
She looked at the teenager standing in the water in his burgundy slip and laughed but the boy's dark eyes were solemn. He caught at her arm and gently pulled her down into the stream. The water was cold. The stones beneath her bare feet felt slippery.
Do not force me, or compel me....
She placed a steadying hand on his shoulder and found herself gazing into those deep dark eyes again.
Suddenly,
he was in her arms,
his lips brussshhhed against hers,
warm,
and very soft, with a slight taste of salt.
She held
her breath.
And then
they kissed and paused and
kissed
kissssssssed
kissssssssssed
smiled
and
kissed again.
"Will you do something for me?" he murmured, "Something important? Then I can tell you everything." He whispered his wishes fiercely into her ear.
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